Women's Sexual Identity More Fluid

Sexual fluidity occurs in both men and women, but it has been suggested that women are potentially more open and malleable in this regard – I know it’s the truth because I’m living it.

New studies show that female sexuality may change over time and that an increasing number of women are choosing women after decades of heterosexuality, so-called, “Late Blooming Lesbians.”

I find the studies accurate, but the label really offensive. A person’s sexuality is not amusing, and confusion about it even less so.

The conventional wisdom is that as people progress in life they become set in their ways. But new research suggests that women have great potential to change in middle age — at least with respect to their sexuality. Researchers say it's increasingly common for women, often after being married to a man for years, to start their first lesbian relationship later in life.

I was married – to a man – divorced and returned to college. My first (and only) lesbian relationship began in my late 20's, and continues to this day. What’s interesting, is that I love my partner in every way possible, but still find men sexually attractive.

I have classified myself as a lesbian, but am not really. The problem with declaring oneself bi-sexual in this day and age is that it’s often politically attacked by the gay and lesbian community. It's called the coward’s way out, unable – or unwilling – to declare your real gayness. It is the sexual equivalent of being an Uncle Tom or a Tio Taco, someone who wants to be accepted by both camps, but ultimately ends up being rejected by both.

Well, bullshit! My sexuality is not political, it’s real and it’s mine. I refuse to be bullied any longer into calling it something that it’s not simply to support a cause, or to avoid ridicule. This is my truth: I AM BI-SEXUAL. It is not a political stance or something I am proud of, it is simply biological. I cannot force my sexual feelings to be other than what they are. It isn’t a matter of choice, but simply one of being.

The phenomenon of women having lesbian relationships later in life is more common than many people believe. Christan Moran, a researcher at Southern Connecticut State University, interviewed more than 200 women over 30 who were married to men but found themselves attracted to a woman, and concluded that heterosexual women can "experience a first same-sex attraction well into adulthood."

U.S. researcher, Christan Moran from Southern Connecticut State University, conducted a study of 200 women who switched their sexual orientation mid life. The women had previously been in heterosexual relationships.

“[There is] great potential for heterosexual women to experience a first same-sex attraction well into adulthood," Moran said.

Moran also believes that it is a false assumption that these women were closeted or had repressed their lesbian tendencies. Moran argues there was evidence that these women may have made "a full transition to a singular lesbian identity...in other words chang[ing] their sexual orientation."

Moran also claimed that women who came out later in life were more prone to struggle with their new identity due to difficulties in leaving the "undeniable privilege" of heterosexual marriage.

Utah University professor Lisa Diamond has, for 15 years, followed a group of 79 women who reported some same-sex attraction. Every two years, 20 to 30 percent change the way they describe themselves — gay, straight, or bi-sexual. Seventy percent have changed since the study began. In August, at the American Psychological Association's annual convention, research by Moran and others will be showcased in a session called "Sexual Fluidity and Late-Blooming Lesbian."

Were these women always gay, but closeted?

Not always. In some instances, women may come out after repressing or hiding their feelings. But Diamond, as quoted in the Guardian, says that often "women who may have always thought that other women were beautiful and attractive would, at some point later in life, actually fall in love with a woman, and that experience vaulted those attractions from something minor to something hugely significant." In these cases, Diamond says, "it wasn't that they'd been repressing their true selves before; it was that without the context of an actual relationship, the little glimmers of occasional fantasies or feelings just weren't that significant."

Why might this happen later in life?

Diamond thinks it might be a combination of factors. Women's minds and bodies change with age, and their circumstances and priorities shift. "People become more expansive in a number of ways as they get older," Diamond says. "I think a lot of women, late in life, when they're no longer worried about raising the kids, and when they're looking back on their marriage and how satisfying it is, find an opportunity to take a second look at what they want and feel like."

Is this a new phenomenon?

No, but researchers theorize declining homophobia is making it easier for women to explore a new sexual identity. And some celebrity lesbians who came out later in life are encouraging even wider social acceptance. Sex and the City's Cynthia Nixon was in a heterosexual relationship for 15 years before she became involved with her current partner, Christine Marinoni, in 2004. Actress Portia de Rossi was married to a man before she married Ellen DeGeneres in 2008. Comedian Carol Leifer, who was the inspiration behind the Elaine character on "Seinfeld," dated men, including Jerry Seinfeld, until the age of 40. Then she fell for a woman. "My feelings for men were very real and powerful, but I fell in love with my partner," she said. "It's been the best relationship of my life."

I find that the Guardian article is so well done and thought provoking, I have included it in full below, or read it directly from its website:

Why it's never too late to be a lesbian


More and more women are discovering after years of marriage to men, and having had children, that they are lesbians. Were they always – or is sexuality more fluid?

By Kira Cochrane

For Carren Strock, the revelation came when she was 44. She had met her husband – "a terrific guy, very sweet" – at high school when she was 16, had been married to him for 25 years, had two dearly loved children, and what she describes as a "white-picket-fence existence" in New York. Then, one day, sitting opposite her best friend, she realised: "Oh my God. I'm in love with this woman." The notion that she might be a lesbian had never occurred to her before. "If you'd asked me the previous year," she says, "I would have replied: 'I know exactly who and what I am – I am not a lesbian, nor could I ever be one.'"

From that moment Strock's understanding of her sexuality changed completely. She felt compelled to tell her friend, but her attraction wasn't reciprocated; at first she wasn't sure whether she had feelings for women in general, or just this one in particular. But she gradually came to realise, and accept, that she was a lesbian. She also started to realise that her experience wasn't unusual.

Strock decided to interview other married women who had fallen in love with women, "putting up fliers in theatres and bookstores. Women started contacting me from across the country – everyone knew someone who knew someone in this situation." The interviews became a book, Married Women Who Love Women, and when it came to writing the second edition, Strock turned to the internet for interviewees. "Within days," she says, "more women had contacted me than I could ever actually speak to."

Late-blooming lesbians – women who discover or declare same-sex feelings in their 30s and beyond – have attracted increasing attention over the last few years, partly due to the clutch of glamorous, high-profile women who have come out after heterosexual relationships. Cynthia Nixon, for instance, who plays Miranda in Sex and the City, was in a heterosexual relationship for 15 years, and had two children, before falling for her current partner, Christine Marinoni, in 2004. Last year, it was reported that the British singer Alison Goldfrapp, who is in her mid-40s, had started a relationship with film editor Lisa Gunning. The actor Portia de Rossi was married to a man before coming out and falling in love with the comedian and talkshow host, Ellen DeGeneres, whom she married in 2008. And then there's the British retail adviser and television star, Mary Portas, who was married to a man for 13 years, and had two children, before getting together with Melanie Rickey, the fashion-editor-at-large of Grazia magazine. At their civil partnership earlier this year the pair beamed for the cameras in beautiful, custom-made Antonio Berardi dresses.

The subject has now begun attracting academic attention. Next month at the American Psychological Association's annual convention in San Diego, a session entitled Sexual Fluidity and Late-Blooming Lesbians is due to showcase a range of research, including a study by Christan Moran, who decided to look at the lives of women who had experienced a same-sex attraction when they were over 30 and married to a man. Moran is a researcher at Southern Connecticut University, and her study was prompted in part by an anguished comment she found on an online message board for married lesbians, written by someone who styled herself "Crazy".

"I don't understand why I can't do the right thing," she wrote. "I don't understand why I can't make myself stop thinking about this other woman." Moran wanted to survey a range of women in this situation, "to help Crazy, and others like her, see that they are not abnormal, or wrong to find themselves attracted to other women later in life".

She also wanted to explore the notion, she writes, that "a heterosexual woman might make a full transition to a singular lesbian identity...In other words, they might actually change their sexual orientation." As Moran notes in her study, this possibility is often ignored; when a person comes out in later life, the accepted wisdom tends to be that they must always have been gay or bisexual, but just hid or repressed their feelings. Increasingly researchers are questioning this, and investigating whether sexuality is more fluid and shifting than is often suspected.

Sarah Spelling, a former teacher, says she can well understand how "you can slide or slip or move into another identity". After growing up in a family of seven children in Birmingham, Spelling met her first serious partner, a man, when she was at university. They were together for 12 years, in which time they were "fully on, sexually," she says, although she adds that she has never had an orgasm with a man through penetrative sex.

Spelling is a keen feminist and sportsperson, and met lesbian friends through both of these interests. "I didn't associate myself with their [sexuality] – I didn't see myself as a lesbian, but very clearly as a heterosexual in a longstanding relationship." When a friend on her hockey team made it clear she fancied her, "and thought I would fancy her too, I was like 'No! That's not me!' That just wasn't on my compass." Then, aged 34, having split up with her long-term partner, and in another relationship with a man, she found herself falling in love with her housemate – a woman. After "lots of talking together, over a year or so," they formed a relationship. "It was a meeting of minds," says Spelling, "a meeting of interests. She's a keen walker. So am I. She runs. So do I. We had lots in common, and eventually I realised I didn't have that with men." While having sex with a man had never felt uncomfortable or wrong, it wasn't as pleasurable as having sex with a woman, she says. From the start of the relationship, she felt completely at ease, although she didn't immediately define herself as a lesbian. "I didn't define myself as heterosexual either – I quite clearly wasn't that. And I wouldn't define myself as bisexual." After a while she fully embraced a lesbian identity. "We've been together for 23 years," she says, "so it's pretty clear that that was a defining change."

Dr Lisa Diamond, associate professor of psychology and gender studies at the University of Utah, has been following a group of 79 women for 15 years, tracking the shifts in their sexual identity. The women she chose at the start of the study had all experienced some same-sex attraction – although in some cases only fleetingly – and every two years or so she has recorded how they describe themselves: straight, lesbian, bisexual, or another category of their own choosing. In every two-year wave, 20-30% of the sample have changed their identity label, and over the course of the study, about 70% have changed how they described themselves at their initial interview. What's interesting, says Diamond, is that transitions in sexual identity aren't "confined to adolescence. People appear equally likely to undergo these sorts of transitions in middle adulthood and late adulthood." And while, in some cases, women arrive at a lesbian identity they've been repressing, "that doesn't account for all of the variables...In my study, what I often found was that women who may have always thought that other women were beautiful and attractive would, at some point later in life, actually fall in love with a woman, and that experience vaulted those attractions from something minor to something hugely significant. It wasn't that they'd been repressing their true selves before; it was that without the context of an actual relationship, the little glimmers of occasional fantasies or feelings just weren't that significant."

Diamond has a hunch that the possibility of moving across sexual boundaries increases as people age. "What we know about adult development," she says, "suggests that people become more expansive in a number of ways as they get older...I think a lot of women, late in life, when they're no longer worried about raising the kids, and when they're looking back on their marriage and how satisfying it is, find an opportunity to take a second look at what they want and feel like." This doesn't mean that women are choosing whether to be gay or straight, she clarifies. (Diamond's work has sometimes been distorted by rightwing factions in the US, who have suggested it shows homosexuality is optional.) "Every one of the women I studied who underwent a transition experienced it as being out of her control. It was not a conscious choice...I think the culture tends to lump together change and choice, as if they're the same phenomenon, but they're not. Puberty involves a heck of a lot of change, but you don't choose it. There are life-course transitions that are beyond our control."

This was certainly true for Laura Manning, a lawyer from London, who is now in her late 40s. She had always had a vague inkling she might have feelings for women, but met a man at university, "a really gentle man, Jeff, and I fell in love with him, and for a long time that was enough to balance my feelings". She married him in her late 20s, had two children in her early 30s, "and once I'd got that maternal part of my life out of the way, I suddenly started thinking about me again. I started to feel more and more uncomfortable about the image that I was presenting, because I felt like it wasn't true." In her late 30s, she began going out clubbing, "coming back on the bus at four in the morning, and then getting up and going to work. I was still living with Jeff, and I just started shutting down our relationship. He knew I was pushing him away."

The marriage ended, and Manning moved out. She has since had two long-term relationships with women, and says she's much happier since she came out, but suspects that her biological urge to have children, and her genuine feelings for Jeff, made her marriage inevitable on some level. "The thought of sex with a man repels me now, but at the time, when I was in my marriage, I didn't feel that, and I didn't feel I was repressing anything. The intensity of feeling in my relationship with Jeff overcame and blanketed my desires for women."

Sexual fluidity occurs in both men and women, but it has been suggested that women are potentially more open and malleable in this regard. Richard Lippa, professor of psychology at California State University, Fullerton, has carried out a variety of studies that have led him to the conclusion that, "while most men tend to have what I call a preferred sex and a non-preferred sex . . . with women there are more shades of grey, and so I tend to talk about them having a more preferred sex, and a less preferred sex. I have definitely heard some women say, 'It was the person I fell in love with, it wasn't the person's gender,' and I think that that is much more of a female experience than a male experience.

"I've never had a straight man say to me, at age 45, I just met this really neat guy and I fell in love with him and I don't like men in general, but God, this guy's so great that I'm going to be in a relationship with him for the next 15 years." In Diamond's study, around a quarter of the women have reported that gender is largely irrelevant in their choice of sexual partners. "Deep down," said one woman, "it's just a matter of who I meet and fall in love with, and it's not their body, it's something behind the eyes."

When Tina Humphrys, 70, first fell in love with a woman, she didn't define herself as a lesbian, "I just thought: 'It's her.'" Humphrys was in her mid-30s, had two children, and was coming out of a horrible second marriage. "I hated my life," she says. "The four bedrooms, the children – well, I didn't hate them, they just bored me to tears. I used to lie on the couch and my eyes would fill with tears as they had their naps."

She had found women attractive in the past, "but I think women do, don't they? You look and you think – that dress looks fabulous, or isn't she looking slim, or doesn't she look pretty. But you don't necessarily put sexual feelings on it." Then she went to university as a mature student, joined a women's group, and started to fall for one of the other members. "It was a bit of a shock to find that I was attracted sexually to this woman, but then it was also a decision to leave men. It was a decision to leave a particularly oppressive and restrictive way of living and try to live differently." She moved into a "commune-type place", and had non-monogamous relationships with women for a while, before settling down with her current partner of more than 30 years. While she had had "a very active sex life with men", she enjoyed sex with women much more. "I was once doing a workshop with a woman who used to tear hideous things that had been said about women out of the paper, and she had a piece about this blonde model who had romped with a lesbian – because they always romp, don't they? – and she said: 'It wasn't proper sex, it was just a load of orgasms.'" Humphrys laughs uproariously. "I think that just about sums it up, doesn't it?"

Beyond the sex, Humphrys found a connection that was more intense "on every level" than any she had found with a man. Strock echoes this view. "I've run workshops with straight women, and I've asked them, did you ever feel those sky rockets go off, or hear the music playing, when you fell in love with that significant other? And very few raise their hands. And then I went to a gay women's group, and I said, how many of you have ever felt the same? And almost all the hands went up. So connections with women are very different to connections between women and men."

The psychotherapist and writer, Susie Orbach, spent more than 30 years with the writer Joseph Schwartz, and had two children with him, before the partnership ended, and she subsequently formed a happy, ongoing relationship with the novelist Jeanette Winterson [author of the brilliant Art & Lies]. Orbach says that the initial love connection between mother and daughter makes lesbian feelings in later life unsurprising. "If you think about it," she says, "whose arms are you first in, whose smells do you first absorb, where's that body-to-body imprint? I mean, we're still not really father-raised, are we, so it's a very big journey for women to get to heterosexuality...What happens is that you layer heterosexuality on top of that bond. You don't suddenly switch away from it. You don't give up that very intimate attachment to a woman."

Of course, the notion that your sexuality might shift entirely isn't welcomed by everyone; as Diamond says, "Even though there's more cultural acceptance than there was 20 years ago, same-sex sexuality is still very stigmatised, and the notion that you might not know everything there is to know about something that's so personal and intimate can terrify individuals. It's really hard for people to accept." That's why the writing and research in this area is so important. When the first edition of Strock's book was published, "a woman came up to me at one of my early speaking engagements, clutching the book and sobbing," she says. "She thought she was the only married woman ever to have fallen in love with another woman, and had no one to talk to, didn't know where to turn. And she had decided that the best thing was to kill herself on a night when she knew her husband and children were going to be out late. She'd planned her suicide. She was coming home from work for what she thought would be the last time, and she passed a bookstore, and they were putting my book in the window, and when she realised that she wasn't the only one, she chose to live".

The late-blooming lesbians I spoke to had all found happiness on their different paths. Strock is still a lesbian – and also still married to her husband, who knows about her sexuality. "He would never throw me away, and I would never throw him away," she says, "so we've re-defined our relationship. I'm a lesbian, but we share a house, we have separate rooms, we have two grandchildren now, and our situation is not unique." Most of the other women I spoke to were in happy, long-term relationships with women, and had found a contentment that they'd never experienced in their previous relationships.

"While some people find change threatening," Diamond says, "others find it exciting and liberating, and I definitely think that for women in middle adulthood and late life, they might be the most likely to find sexual shifts empowering. We're an anti-ageing society. We like people to be young, nubile and attractive. And I think the notion that your sexuality can undergo these really exciting, expansive possibilities at a stage when most people assume that women are no longer sexually interesting and are just shutting down, is potentially a really liberating notion for women. Your sexual future might actually be pretty dynamic and exciting – and whatever went on in your past might not be the best predictor at all of what your future has in store."

— The Curator

Belle de Jour Travels West

The always fabulous Belle de Jour has crossed the pond to our neck of the woods to participate in several conferences that will no doubt increase her ever-burgeoning popularity in the U.S.

Her website describes her as: “Belle de Jour is the pen name of Brooke Magnanti, a UK-based writer and science researcher. Interests: whisky, taphonomy, PGP encryption.”

Today, she is in Sin City (Las Vegas, Nevada to the uninitiated. Nevada is the only state in the U.S. where prostitution is legal) participating on a Privacy and Security panel at an important conference sponsored by the Desiree Aliance.

[The above photograph, which appeared in the Expresso, Portugal, on June 26, is a great shot of Brooke in her trademark high heels, with an empty glass of a favorite single-malt in the foreground.]

Brooke, of Bristol, England, is a noted scientist whose specialist areas are developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology. She has a PhD in informatics, epidemiology and forensic science and is now working at the Bristol Initiative for Research of Child Health. She recently completed a project researching the potential effects on babies of their mothers' exposure to toxic chemicals.

But from 2003 to late 2004, Brooke worked as a prostitute via a London escort agency; she started blogging as Belle de Jour — after the Buñuel film starring Catherine Deneuve as a well-to-do housewife who has sex for money because she’s bored — shortly into her career as a call girl, after an incident she thought funny enough to write down.

She charged £300 an hour for her services, of which she got £200. The average appointment lasted two hours; she saw clients two or three times a week, “sometimes less, sometimes a great deal more,” she has said.

Brooke has been keeping a low profile on the Internet recently, but has kept a very busy schedule traveling to Portugal to promote the publication of her books in translation, then onto the West Coast of the U.S., and then to Nevada.

I have been a fan of Brooke’s since her award-winning and now iconic blog hit the Internet in 2003. I have remained a steadfast friend and supporter since, and eagerly await any and everything she chooses to write in the future - even if it's about science!

Earlier this month, Brooke gave a presentation at Femina Potens, (which was “tickled pink to introduce you to the multi-dimensional world of Sex Workers,) held in San Francisco. The following promotional article appeared in the San Francisco Bay Guardian on July 14:

Hot sexy events July 14-20

By Caitlin Donohue

[Ex sex worker-blogger Belle De Jour teaches the tricks of the (latter) trade at Femina Potens gallery.]

Brooke Magnanti didn't always appreciate the transformative power of writing about sex. As “the most famous call girl in the world,” she wrote an infamous blog in the UK about her life and times as a prostitute. She got famous – although she kept her true identity concealed – and a hit TV show was made of her life. Her frank sex talk kept everyone intrigued, titillated, and humanized sex workers for an online audience. And then the tabloids found out who she was.

And she was poked, prodded, harassed via email, her parents were interrogated, her ex boyfriend started getting all threaten-y. Her other career as a research scientist was called into question. Sucks. But she's better now, happy she voiced her sexual reality, and as found her relationships deepen on account of it. She's looking to teach you how to seize the power of the pen (and Ipad) for the same means this weekend, in a talk (Sat/17) and writing workshop (Sun/18) at Femina Potens gallery. She's ex-hooker, hear her roar.

~~~

Today, Brooke will participate in her panel after Dr. Joycelyn Elders, former U.S. Surgeon General, kicked off the conference as the keynote speaker.

"The Desiree Alliance is a coalition of sex workers, health professionals, social scientists, professional sex educators, and their supporting networks working together for an improved understanding of the sex industry and its human, social and political impacts. Our focus is on building local and regional leadership and constructive activism in the sex worker population to advocate for sex workers' human, labor and civil rights," according to its website.

This year’s conference, "Working Sex: Power, Practice, and Politics," continues until July 30.

Among the participants of the week are Furry Girl, and Nina Hartley, Adult entertainer, sex educator, and author.

(Note: Furry Girl, a fascinating sex worker with a not-to-be-missed blog that is also a favorite of mine, will be participating in a panel and also presenting Solo Girl.)

Fear not, oh U.K. readers, Brooke will be back home, soon. She is scheduled to speak on “Chance and Luck” appropriately on Friday, 13 Aug., with Science for All Brainwaves, part of the British Science Association, to be held at St George's Lecture Theatre, Sheffield.
Here’s the description:

Held on the apt Friday 13th, Dr. Brooke Magnanti will give a public lecture on chance and luck.

"What is luck, and what is chance? While these two terms are almost interchangeable in everyday usage, the meaning can be unclear.

Chance, odds, and other such ideas relate to the probability of occurrence – simple notions of discrete mathematics that, if the 65% of people who consider the lottery as a likely source of their retirement income indicates, are poorly understood. Using a few simple examples the statistical concepts will be illustrated.

But in the more philosophical sense, what is the meaning of luck? The finding of a lucky penny is determined by chance. Its discovery is imbued with the assumption that a semi-random action can subtly influence the events which occur after it. In other words, the universe is not a predetermined, closed system.

Both the ideas that the universe is predictable, but that it is also not determinable feed not only into popular understanding – and misunderstanding – of luck and chance, but also more sophisticated notions such as cosmic uncertainty, dark energy, whether the cyclic model of the fate of the universe is correct, and when, exactly, we can expect the singularity (hint: probably not on Friday the 13th).

~~~~

Her most recent books include Belle de Jour’s Guide to Men, 2009; Belle’s Bits, 2009; and Playing the Game, June 2009. Earlier books are The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl, September 2005; and The Further Adventures of a London Call Girl, May 2007.

All of her books are well-worth reading and widely available across the pond at Amazon's UK division.

Her writing has been so popular that it became the basis for the international hit TV series, Secret Diary of a Call Girl, starring Billie Piper. It can be seen on Showtime in the U.S., and the first two seasons are available on DVD. The third season was previewed by a special 30-minute interview of Brooke by Billie.

As always: Cheers, m’dear!

— The Curator

Drill, BABY DRILL!

Worried about the spill in the Gulf? Worried about your own personal spill inside your partner? No problem, one company has “cum” up with the solution to both.

While BP Oil struggles to keep its prophylactic cap on and clean up its mess, Practice Safe Policy (the company behind the Obama, McCain, and Palin condoms during the last presidential election) have a unique solution to the Deepwater Horizon Spill: Oil Spill Condoms. Sales of the condom run $30 for a 10-pack or $5 individually.

“We created Oil Spill Condoms after seeing a number of reports throughout the media that only 4 million dollars had been raised to help with the relief efforts along the Gulf. After seeing hours and hours of this catastrophe unfold throughout the media, we decided that we needed to help bring attention to this catastrophe the only way we knew how; by putting it on a condom,” said Practice Safe Policy founder Benjamin Sherman.

“Our goal is to raise $50,000 to help with the Gulf Coast relief effort. After reviewing the charities that are involved in helping the Gulf, we found that the Gulf Coast Oil Spill Fund is the organization that can help make the most use of our donations,” Sherman said.

“In the short-term, the Gulf Coast Oil Spill Fund will make emergency grants to nonprofit organizations helping the victims of the oil spill. In the long-term they will help address the long-term economic, environmental, cultural effects of the disaster, and strengthen coastal communities against future environmental catastrophes by investing in solutions,” Sherman said.

The Greater New Orleans Foundation's Gulf Coast Oil Spill Fund supports fishermen and their families in the Plaquemines, St. Bernard, Lower Jefferson, Terrebonne, and Lafourche parishes.

To find out more, click here.

Here are a few choice marketing phrases, "Drill without the spill," "Great for containing your gusher and protecting your junk shot!" and "They're great for deep drilling, and they'll help to prevent a blow-out!"

They're available online OilSpillCondoms.

“This is the worst oil spill in U.S. history and as citizens we need to do what we can to help," Sherman said. “We want our customers to gush for a cause with the Oil Spill Condom.”

Here are the FAQ’s listed at the company’s website:

Q: Are they real condoms?
A: Oil Spill Condoms are real latex condoms that are FDA approved. Not only will they protect you from accidental spills, but they’ll provide relief from long term drilling.

Q: Will they work?
A: Each FDA approved condom is guaranteed not to leak, but accidents do happen, so it’s best to buytwo, or even three. Besides, the more you buy, the more is donated to help rebuild the Gulf. To find out more, click here.

Q: What makes Oil Spill Condoms so special?
A: Oil Spill Condoms were designed to hold up under the rigorous pressure from deep drilling.

Q: What size are they?
A: Oil Spill Condoms are one size fits most. Unlike regular condoms, you won't experience a blow-out; they'll contain your gusher!

Q: Usage tips.
A: Oil Spill Condoms do not like prolonged exposure to direct sunlight. Don't let them go past their expiration date. Like any irresponsible corporation, over time Oil Spill Condoms will become less effective and prone to failure.

~~~

Damn, I wish I’d thought of this. We all need to help the gulf residents survive the worst ecological disaster in U.S. history – and we all need to have safe sex. So, buy these condoms! Men take your best shot while doing your civic duty, along with doing your partner. Women (or men), be prepared for drilling anytime by having some in your purse or bedside table when he’s too stupid to remember them for himself.

— The Curator

Is Divorce the Next H1N1 Virus?

A new study that has been described by some (including me) as ‘flawed’ seems to suggest that divorce might be contagious.

Researchers say that if a close friend divorces, then the chances of your own divorce increases by 75 percent. They claim that a divorce has ripple effects on loved ones, close relatives, friends and even coworkers.

The research, which was led by Dr. Rose McDermott, tracked more than 12,000 Americans living in Framingham, Mass. The researchers looked into the lives of the people since 1948. According to McDermott, “These results go beyond previous work intimating a person-to-person effect to suggest a person-to-person-to-person effect. Individuals who get divorced may influence not only their friends, but their friends’ friends as the propensity to divorce spreads.”

The researchers also say merely knowing more divorced couples greatly increase your risk of divorce. The researchers also said a friend’s friend divorce negatively affects your own marriage’s chances of succeeding.

But critics of the study say that the premise of the research is flawed. They claim that the researchers culled their data from a previous 1948 work called “Framingham Heart Study.” They claim that the Framingham Heart Study makes it almost impossible to know the reason for the divorce.

~~~~~~

I’m all for social research, really I am, but it’s also the most difficult type of scientific study to perform with success. There are often way too many variables to be able to reach any type of true scientific conclusion. I think this study is utterly ridiculous. The researchers used a small sampling of people and took mismatched (sorry for the pun) data, reached a bogus conclusion then expanded that to the general population.

Divorces happen for as many reasons as there are couples, just like marriages. It is simple-minded to believe you can ‘catch’ divorce from your neighbor’s failing relationships, any more than you can ‘catch’ love from your married friends.

What do you say we stop wasting any more research funds on this type of nonsense, and put real effort into understanding human behavior, and what makes and breaks adult relationships.

— The Curator

Womb to Spare

Angie Cromar is no stranger to pregnancy. Besides being a labor and delivery nurse, she also has three children with her husband. Pregnancy number four should have been a breeze for her.

However, despite her experience, nothing could have prepared her for what her first ultrasound revealed, surprising her and her doctor.

The ‘twins’ she’s currently carrying are not actually twins at all. Cromar, 34, has a rare condition called uterus didelphys, or ‘double-uterus.’

She discovered she was pregnant with two babies at two slightly different stages of development – about four days apart.

"I'm five weeks and four days in one, and six weeks and one day in the other,” she said.

So, one baby is due in about five months, with the other due about one week later. The two babies will be siblings, not twins, but will be the exact same age.

Many women with this unusual uterine structure go undiagnosed their whole life, although they do have higher rates of miscarriage and premature births than women with typical uteri.

Although Cromar, of Murray, Utah, knew of her condition, she never expected to find herself pregnant with two babies in separate wombs. It was never an issue in her other pregnancies, but this time she conceived in both.

The chances of this happening are one in five million.

"Probably less than 100, so far, worldwide, have been reported," said her doctor, Steve Terry. "So she's a member of a small, elite club."

Cromar said her husband was excited, but a bit incredulous, when she broke the news to him.

"He didn't believe me for a little while," she said.

Then reality set in. As a labor and delivery nurse, Cromar said she knew the rarity can bring about complications like pre-term labor and low birth weight.

"Oh, I'm a little nervous, just because I know what can happen, but I'm really excited. It's pretty rare. We are pretty thankful, pretty happy," she said.

The babies are already creating a buzz for the family, which is now buying double of everything, and in the medical community.

"As far as setting up bleachers and selling tickets, we are not anticipating that, though," Terry said.

The babies are due some time around January, 2011.

~~~~~~

Whoa! And I always thought having one uterus was problem enough!

— The Curator

No Sex Month Suggested

Not this month dearest, we BOTH have headaches.

Kenyans may consider holding a national "no-sex" month to slow down the spread of HIV and maintain the current momentum which has seen a drop in new infections.

This is one of the innovative and less expensive methods, countries attending the 18th International AIDS Conference 2010 which opened in Vienna, Austria on Sunday, may have to consider.

First proposed by Aids researchers, Prof Alan Whiteside of the University of Kwazulu-Natalin South Africa and Dr. Justin Parkhurst of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the U.K. in April, the hypothesis is gaining momentum and the two will be suggesting it be put on trial.

The new proposal was first published in the Southern African Journal of HIV Medicine, in April and forms part of hundreds of proposals and researches to be discussed at the ongoing Vienna conference.

Writing of the proposal for aidsmap, one of the official online information channels for the Aids 2010 international conference Keith Alcorn says Swaziland, which has a high HIV prevalence rate is considering trying out the idea.

The researchers argue that, since newly infected people have the highest transmission rates to their partners, an abstinence period would disrupt the infection chain with significant gains in bringing down the prevalence rates.

Scientists say HIV levels are highest in first six weeks after infection. This is before the body's defense system kicks in to fight the virus. Individuals in this phase are thought to account for anywhere from 10 to 45 per cent of new HIV infections.

"Stopping large numbers of recently infected people from passing on the virus for a month could act as a "fire break," in the same way that trees are chopped down in a forest fire to break the progress of the fire," says aidsmap.

The researchers say countries may try other options depending on what is most acceptable to their people. They may try a month of protected sex for all, or no commercial sex for everybody for a certain duration.

Another suggestion would include no sex at night for a period of time for the whole population. This behavioral change options comes soon after Kenya won praise from the conference organizers, UNAids on its success in convincing the youth to adopt responsible sex.

In a pre-conference communication last Thursday, UNAids said HIV prevalence in pregnant women aged 15 to 24 fell by at least a quarter in 12 countries, with some of the steepest drops in Kenya.

"Young people have shown that they can be change agents in the prevention revolution," the agency said in its OUTLOOK Report 2010.

Talking to the Nation soon after the release of the report, Dr. Nicholas Muraguri, the director of the National Aids and Sexually Transmitted Infections Control Program, said persistent campaigns have resulted in behavior change among the youth, considerably reducing the infection rate.

He said condom use as well as voluntary counseling and testing are also on the increase because of the efforts. "There are more young people using condoms, and many more are going for HIV tests without fear.

"This has seen HIV testing rise from 35 per cent to 70 per cent in the recent past," said Muraguri as he prepared to leave for the Vienna meeting. "Unlike in the past, when men would brag about the number of women they had slept with, young people are now more cautious.”
 
— The Curator

Her Crime: Adultery; Her Punishment: DEATH

They will wrap the bulk of her body in a white shroud; bind her arms and legs; bury her upright to her waist; then STONE her until she DIES as slowly and painfully as possible – after telling the swelling, eager crowd to select the rocks they will hurl with the utmost care, so that they will not kill her immediately.

Just where and in what barbaric era would this have happened? July 2010, Iran.

When I began this blog, I created my alter ego, “The Curator,” who would lead readers through the amazing and varied world of sexual behavior and beliefs without judgment, with as much neutrality as possible.

Not this time.

I had done this because I felt there were too many loud opinions about anything and everything and not enough information conveyed in markedly egocentric blogs. I wanted readers to decide how they felt, working hard to make The Curator as unobtrusive as possible, even invisible rather than a part of the process.

Not this time.

Here are the facts:

Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani, a 43-year-old mother of two, was convicted on May 15, 2006 of having an "illicit relationship" with two men, according to Amnesty International and her lawyer.

She has now been sentenced to death by stoning.

Her lawyer, Mohommad Mostafaei, said Mohammadi-Ashtiani confessed to the crime after being subjected to 99 lashes. She later recanted that confession and has denied wrongdoing, he said.

Her conviction was based not on evidence but on the determination of three out of five judges, he added. She has asked forgiveness from the court but the judges refused to grant clemency. Iran's supreme court upheld the death conviction in 2007.

Apparently, Iran was reviewing that sentence of stoning, a rights official said, but her lawyer warned today that there was no guarantee the execution would be halted.

Mohammad Javad Larijani, Iran's top human rights official, said late Friday that the verdict of death by stoning against Mohammadi-Ashtiani is being reviewed by the judiciary.

"She was sentenced to 90 lashes by one court and stoning by another. The verdict is under revision," Larijani was quoted as saying by state news agency Islamic Republic News Agency.

He said the chief of Iran's judiciary, Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani, was of the opinion that it was preferable to use another penalty instead of stoning, "and that is true for Ms. Mohammadi-Ashtiani."

Larijani did not say what penalty she could face instead, but added: "The penalty of stoning exists under the law but the judges rarely use it."

Mostafai told news agencies today that he had yet to receive any official confirmation that the stoning sentence had been revised.

"There is no guarantee that it will be halted," he said.

"Sentences such as stoning will be closely reviewed and probably changed," Larijani told Iran's Islamic Republic News Agency.

[Above: Protesters in London demonstrate against the planned stoning, and to mark the 11th Anniversary of the July 9th Iranian student uprising.]

In London today protesters waved flags and chanted anti-government slogans to the beat of a drum in front of the Iranian Embassy. They condemned executions in Iran – by stoning and hanging.

But Larijani said protests from outside Iran will not affect Mohammadi-Ashtiani's case.

"The Western attacks have no effect on the opinion of our judges," he told the news agency.

Larijani's comments seemed to contradict Iran's public statements made Thursday from its embassy in London that strongly suggested Mohammadi-Ashtiani would not be stoned.

The public statement said, "this mission denies the false news aired in this respect and...according to information from the relevant judicial authorities in Iran, she will not be executed by stoning punishment.

"It is notable that this kind of punishment has rarely been implemented in Iran and various means and remedies must be probed and exhausted to finally come up with such a punishment," the embassy statement concluded.

Mohammadi-Ashtiani's son, Sajjad Mohammedie Ashtiani, who appealed Wednesday to Iran's courts to spare his mother's life and also appealed to the world for help via Twitter, said he won't accept any decision short of his mother's freedom.

Through human rights activist Mina Ahadi, the son said he would be satisfied only when Iran's judiciary officially drops the charges against her.

Ahadi has said that only an international campaign designed to pressure the Islamic regime in Tehran could save Mohammadi-Ashtiani's life.

"Legally, it's all over," said Ahadi, who heads the International Committee Against Stoning and the Death Penalty, earlier this week.

Ashtiani's son wrote in an open letter to government officials that there was neither evidence nor legal grounds for his mother's conviction and sentence. He said the family has traveled six times from their home in Tabriz to Tehran to speak with Iranian officials, but in vain.

Amnesty said she received flogging of 99 lashes as per her sentence but was subsequently accused of "adultery while being married" in September 2006 during the trial of a man accused of murdering her husband.

Mostafai said his client knew the man who, "killed her husband and because she was at home when the murder took place, she was accused as accomplice."

She was pardoned on the murder charges, but then accused of adultery with that man, Mostafai said.

Mostafai added that such cases involving women in Iran arise due to difficulties in getting divorces with husbands despite, "having troubled marriages."

Enough! Enough fear. Enough pain. Enough agony. Enough torture. Enough death. E-NOUGH misery imposed by cowardly dictators hiding behind the safety net of blind religious tradition and the faithful.

I am a tolerant person. I believe that all countries have the right of autonomy, that religion is personal and should be left to believers to choose or reject, and that WEST does not always equal BEST.

I am not a Christian; I am not a Jew; I am not a Muslim. I do not follow any of the Abrahamic faith paths. I am not speaking out as an American, or a proponent of any political ideology. I am speaking simply as a human being, reaching out to other human beings. I am literally on my knees. I beg Iran and all Iranians to spare this woman, and to abolish this horrific practice. Please. Please.

— The Curator